Opiniões dos críticos

If the filmmaking feels poetic and subdued, it’s the opposite of coy. Leaf is confident enough to let her images, as much as her written dialogue, do much of the narrative lifting... These are ordinary stories, Leaf humbly suggests, even as she tells them with extraordinary depth of feeling.

[Earth Mama] is intimate, modestly scaled and often so outwardly unassuming that you might not at first notice its artistry. It also features one of the most expressive scenes that I’ve seen all year, one that reveals a world of heartache with a single camera movement.

Earth Mama likely could accomplish what it sets out to do more successfully with a shorter runtime. The narrative’s looseness, while in some ways a point of strength, can stagnate matters when the film hits some meandering stretches... Still, these small flaws do little to compromise a work of such power and clarity of vision, and Earth Mama ultimately resonates as a work of uncommon rawness and realness.

Leaf dramatizes Gia’s conflicts in scenes of trenchant dialogue... which give voice to the multigenerational traumas of Black families torn apart for political purposes. But it’s the extended, intimate closeups that render Gia’s inner turmoil in the form of active, self-aware thought.

[Earth Mama] pitches itself somewhere between the detail accumulation of cinéma vérité and the feeling you’ve stepped into someone’s dream... scenes don’t feel composed so much as captured on the fly.

Leaf takes an almost experiential type of aesthetic route to key us to Gia’s prison-like situation. And through it all, Nomore skillfully lets us see the cracks in her character’s erstwhile ironclad demeanor. Pained and honest, the actress is as emotionally vulnerable as Earth Mama itself, never catering to sensationalism.

"Earth Mama" has a few poetic flourishes that are overly familiar with indie movies of this type (and from this festival), but it is a wildly confident debut that displays Leaf’s great control of performances and cinematography.

[Earth Mama] is a difficult, demanding portrait of a life in shambles, susceptible to being relegated to poverty porn or a social-realistic bent that surrenders to one-note misery. It’s a miracle, then, that Olympian-turned-director Leaf finds both the humanity and beauty of every frame, bringing empathy to an impossible situation and delivering an abundance of grace notes.

Earth Mama is a melancholic story transformed into a precious portrait by the director’s generous and nurturing eye. She digs into the familiar landscape of a Black mother facing an oppressive legal system and pulls from it the most unexpected and humanizing details. She observes them with a loving curiosity, and then asks viewers to do the same.

In [Leaf's] hands, Gia’s story becomes too mannered, too anthropological... Gia [herself] only feels like the outline of an idea, with her experience colored in by a second-hand source... Still, those blemishes do not render “Earth Mama” dispensable... [The film] is grounded enough and empathetic enough to be worth the bleak toll it exacts.

“Earth Mama” offers a nuanced take on the proverbial notion that it takes a village to raise a child... DP Jody Lee Lipes avoids the clichés of most social realist dramas. At times, Gia’s situation recalls the Dardenne brothers’ wrenching “L’Enfant"... though Leaf rejects the intrusive pseudo-documentary approach, with its shaky handheld style, opting for intimacy instead.

“Earth Mama” is a shimmering stunner... Leaf has a canny eye for locating the subversion and beauty within a welfare-system drama about a single mother fighting for her life and children. What sounds, on paper, like a challenging sit is actually a wondrous 97-minute feature, whose director and star are obviously poised for greatness.